Knitted articles tend to deknit and fray at points of stress. In the case of a glove, a tear causes a tendency to run and make the glove unusable. It will be appreciated that there is more of a tendency to create a run due to stress at the raw edge of such a glove than from an inner area spaced from an edge. Thus, there is a tendency for excessive stress to be created when donning a glove at the cuff. It is further desirable to provide a means for gripping which would not cause irritation at the edge to the wearer.
Knitted garments such as pants and turtle neck shirts and sweaters are particularly stressed at their edges because the elastic edge must first be stressed to go over the head as is the case of a shirt or sweater and to stretch over a foot or shoe when it is a pant leg. In turtle neck sweaters it is desirable to provide a rollover at the edge to prevent irritation from a reinforcing edge member.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,479,368 to Gloeckler, which is herein incorporated by reference, discloses a programmable knitting machine which may be used in the present invention.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,987,614 to Murray discloses a method for providing reinforcing portions in the crotch region between adjacent finger stalls using the application of Merrow stitching or overedging stitch. However, this type of stitch is not at the edge and will not cause rollover.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,745,919 discloses a protective knit glove wherein the edge of the cuff is hemmed to prevent unraveling.
U.S. Pat. No. 2,342,547 to Kuehnel discloses a knitted mitten wherein the cuff is doubled upon itself. Cord is then fed with yarn wool in such a way that the cord covers the wool yarn on the outside of the glove while the yarn covers the cord on the inside of the glove.
U.S. Pat. No. 3,990,115 to Nester discloses a rolltop cuffless sock which has a permanent folded top portion. Elastic yarn is provided only in a circular horizontal knit and does not cause the rollover. Also, only one type of roll is formed.